Further to our recent announcement that Office for iPad is now available, I just wanted to take this opportunity to share some additional information that hopefully addresses some of the queries I have been receiving via email and Twitter over the last week around both the apps and how best to license them for your faculty and students.
Reading, viewing and presenting your content is available for free and if you have a valid Office 365 ProPlus license you can also create and edit Office documents on your iPad. This license is part of the A3 SKU and the Student Advantage SKU within Office 365 Education so you can now provide this to your faculty and students. The following deck below gives an overview of the various options available.
Office for iPad has been written specifically for the iPad and takes full advantage of the unique features of the device that are perfectly suited for keyboard and mouse free use. The Office for iPad apps have a familiar look and feel, though, and content created using the apps will look amazing across all your devices.
Furthermore, much like Office on a PC or Mac, collaboration and review sits at the heart of Office for iPad. Multiple people can work simultaneously on the same document. Just make sure that its saved to OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint so that others can access your document.
The Office for iPad apps can be downloaded directly from the App Store and can be run on up to 5 devices. Faculty and students will need to be running IOS 7 on their devices.
For a full overview of Office for iPad in action, take the time over a coffee to watch the video below that discusses the array of Office experiences now available across multiple platforms - including Office for iPad. The whole video is worth checking out, but if you want to just watch the iPad related content, just jump to the 10 minute mark.
So, as mentioned previously, if all you are looking to do with the apps is view content or present your PowerPoint material to colleagues, you do not need any additional licensing. Just download the apps for free from the App Store and you are up and running.
If, however, you want to open your documents from OneDrive for Business, edit or format content on the go or save back to any of our cloud based storage options such as OneDrive or SharePoint, you would need to look into the additional Office 365 subscription options.
If your Office 365 subscription ends, don’t worry. You will still be able to view your Office documents with Office for iPad and the data on your device is not lost. You will not, however, be able to create and edit content on your iPad until the subscription has been renewed, and this can easily be done by signing back in with a valid Microsoft Account etc.
The table below may also be useful in terms of helping you understand the additional functionality that can be unlocked with an Office 365 Education subscription.
If you have any questions about how best to license your faculty or students for Office for iPad using Office 365 Education, please do not hesitate to leave us a note in the comments below.
Alternatively, drop your reseller a note and they will be delighted to help you with your query.
